Long Before Patriots Scandal, N.F.L. Was Rocked by High School Ringers

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The Chicago Cardinals against the Chicago Bears in 1925. Later that season, the Cardinals’ Art Folz was punished for persuading high schoolers to act as opponents.CreditUnderwood Archives, via Getty Images

By Rob Harms

Aug. 4, 2015

In 1925, four high school students, recruited by a star athlete, tried to blend in as professional players during an N.F.L. game in Chicago.

The students were, in the end, noticed — resulting in what is believed to be the N.F.L.’s first suspension. And coming 90 years before the New England Patriots’ ball-inflation scandal, that case involving the high school ringers set a precedent for all peculiar N.F.L. scandals and suspensions to come.

N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell last week upheld Tom Brady’s four-game suspension for his role in the Patriots’ use of underinflated footballs in the A.F.C. championship game last season, eliciting much discussion on how the league metes out justice for its players.

But in 1925, five years after the league was founded as the American Professional Football Association, a four-game sentence would have seemed lenient.

Art Folz, a player for the Chicago Cardinals, was initially barred from the league for life for persuading the four high school players — Charles Richardson, William Thompson, Jack Daniels and James Snyder — to play on an opposing team for one game. Ambrose McGuirk, the owner of that team, the Milwaukee Badgers, was forced to sell the franchise in the wake of the incident.

In 1925, the Cardinals were in a tight race for first place with the Pottsville Maroons, and to pad their record, the owner Chris O’Brien organized a game for Dec. 10 at Normal Park against Milwaukee, which was 0-6 that year. In the early years of the N.F.L., teams could add to their schedules up until late December, and O’Brien exercised that right.

But O’Brien was concerned that the Badgers, who had already disbanded for the season, would not be able to scrap together enough players.

“The next day or so I remarked: ‘I wonder if McGuirk will come through with a team all right,’ ” he wrote in The Chicago Daily Tribune on Dec. 17, 1925, in an explanation that appeared on the front page of the sports section under the banner headline “Pros Tell Full Story of Prep Scandal.”“That remark was overheard by one of my players, Art Folz. He said perhaps he could pick up some players if extras were needed.”

But two days before the game, he did just that: After he was unable to meet with the professional players, Folz wrote, he “just happened to drop into the Englewood high school to chat with the boys.”

The idea of asking some of the high school players to round out Milwaukee’s roster popped into his head. With the game scheduled for a Thursday afternoon, Folz thought there would be no crowd or price of admission, so the high school players’ amateur status would not be affected.

“I mentioned it, and they were eager to play,” Folz wrote. “They seemed to think it would be quite a stunt.”

The students, according to a Dec. 24, 1925, article in The Tribune, played “because they were led into it, believing it was a practice contest, and they wanted to learn some of the fine points of the game from the big pro stars.” They, like Folz, did not think their participation would hurt their amateur standing, the article said.

Pruter, who has written extensively about Chicago high school sports, said that the N.F.L. was so young that the differences between high school football and professional football were not nearly as stark as they are today. Folz, a top N.F.L. player, was listed as 5 feet 7 and 157 pounds.

“The professional league was still a baby at that time,” Pruter said. “I don’t think it was that huge of a leap.”

And so, when game day arrived, so did the four high school students.

According to an Associated Press article published in The New York Times on Dec. 24, 1925, the four boys said they told their parents the night before about their involvement in the game. They also said that they were introduced to the other players under their own names and that they even used their Englewood High School signals.

Folz wrote that he distributed Badgers jerseys to the boys, turned them over to McGuirk and “never thought anything more about it.”

“I was somewhat surprised to see there was quite a crowd of spectators at the game,” he added.

Those fans saw a demolition. Chicago, powered by Folz’s four touchdowns, won by 59-0.

“They were creamed,” Pruter said of the Badgers. “It was embarrassing. It was an embarrassing win.”

It got worse, for pretty much everyone involved. Joseph Carr, the league president, was in the hospital at the time, recuperating from appendicitis, according to the biography “The Man Who Built the National Football League: Joe F. Carr” by Chris Willis.

In addition to barring Folz for life, Carr fined the Cardinals $1,000 (about $13,600 in 2015 dollars), put them on probation for one year, fined the Badgers $500 and ordered McGuirk to sell the team within 90 days. (The Badgers ended up folding as a franchise after the 1926 season.)

In his state-of-the-league address the next February, Carr said that the incident “threatened to tear the very foundation from under our league,” according to the biography, which also said Carr’s penalties were “universally praised across the country.”

The high school players were initially barred from athletics for having played against professional players, which represented a violation of amateurism. Perhaps such a young and uncertain league needed Carr’s severe punishment, especially given the nature of the scandal: a professional athlete persuading four young players to join an opposing team, for the sake of pursuing a championship.

The newspapers painted a picture of “vile professionals” luring innocent high school students “into trouble with lies and deception,” according to the book “Shaping College Football: The Transformation of an American Sport, 1919-1930” by Raymond Schmidt.

Folz, for his part, expressed tremendous regret and accepted all blame.

“I am heartbroken over it and would do anything in the world to get them back, because those boys were blameless in the affair,” Folz wrote in The Tribune.

Whether his remorse played a role in what happened later is unknown. O’Brien’s fine was retracted and Folz’s lifetime ban revoked, though he did not return to professional football. The high school players were forgiven, and Richardson and Thompson even earned all-star honors at the end of the season.

And after another N.F.L. scandal in December 1925 — this one involving territorial rights and ending with Carr’s suspension of the Pottsville Maroons — the Chicago Cardinals were named league champions.

There is hope for Brady yet.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B9 of the New York edition with the headline: The N.F.L. Suspension That Started Them All. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe